Promise Me
by Singerdiva01
Summary: Why had President Roslin's condition deteriorated so severely before she was rushed to Life Station? Why wasn't Admiral Adama at her side when she arrived? Missing scenes from after "the kiss" in Resurrection Ship, Part 2 and before the first scene in Epiphanies. Spoilers up to that point.
1. A Promise Kept

_**Colonial One, 11:00, the day the tylium refinery is destroyed by Cylon sympathizers**_

Billy Keikeya settled down in his seat in the makeshift office of the President of the Twelve Colonies. He willed himself to look down at the schedule in his hand and start about the work of tasking out the meetings President Roslin was supposed to attend that day.

He'd just left the woman in question sleeping, peacefully for now, on the couch a few feet away. They both knew that her death was days, if not hours, away. When he crept into her quarters that morning to wake her for the day, he'd found her curled up in a ball on the couch that served as her bed, covered in sweat and emitting a low moaning sound.

"Madam President!" He ran to the edge of the bed and stood above his boss for a moment, unsure of what to do. Realizing she was in no condition to give him any instructions, he set about carefully untangling her limbs from the sweat soaked sheets and gently positioning her on her back. The gesture served only to make her more uncomfortable, as her moans gave way to increasingly frantic gasps for air.

"Madam President?" He knelt beside her and tried to help her find a position in which it was easier to breathe. "Madam President, can you hear me?" Her eyes were unfocused, staring at something over his shoulder that only she could see. "Laura! Laura, I need you to look at me. Do you want me to get Doctor Cottle?"

The use of her first name by her normally formal aide momentarily shocked President Roslin out of the haze of pain. She grasped at his shoulder, leveraging his body to roll ungracefully onto her side. The movement caused her to cry out again as agonizing spasms racked her body but, to both their surprise, her breath came slightly easier in the new position. "No, Billy," she managed. "Remember what I said. Please." Her green eyes found his blue ones and she silently begged him not to sentence her to the machines and constant pitying looks from a barrage of well-wishers come to gawk at her in Life Station.

"I need something for the pain," she gasped, gesturing in the direction of her personal restroom. Rather than moving in that direction to fetch her pills, he considered the frail woman before him for a moment before rushing out of the quarters toward his desk.

He returned a moment later with a syringe in hand. Her eyes were closed and she was muttering something incoherent between sharp, ragged breaths. "Madam President, I'm going to give you something to help you sleep." She was beyond responding as he took her arm and prepared to inject the leader of the human race with the powerful substance, given to him by Dr. Cottle for this exact situation.

She barely noticed the prick or the strong pressure of his thumb on the tiny puncture wound, but she quieted as the medicine started to take effect. Billy stared at her face, waiting for the woman who had become the center of his world to give any sort of indication that she knew he was there. Her eyes fluttered open and she attempted a weak smile. "Thank you, Billy. For that and…," she trailed off as sleep started to envelop her.

"You're welcome, Madam President." He found her hand and patted it gently. "I'll be right here when you wake up." Her eyes registered his words and flashed with gratitude before they closed and her ragged breathing became more even.


	2. A Promise Extracted

_**Colonial One, two days earlier, moments after Admiral Adama's promotion ceremony**_

Billy struggled to hide his smile as he helped President Roslin from her office to her private quarters. He'd just witnessed the most powerful man in the world kiss the most powerful woman in the world on the lips. And she'd giggled. Actually giggled.

She noticed his blatant grin as he helped her toward the couch and decided she had to use what little remaining strength she had to have one more conversation with the devoted young man who'd helped make the most delightful moment in months come to pass.

As Billy settled her into a comfortable position, he looked up expectantly, waiting for the order of dismissal that usually came at the end of this daily ritual. She patted the seat next to her and, after a frown and a pause, he sat down gingerly to avoid jostling her.

"Billy, I want to thank you for getting those wings for Admiral Adama. I can rest easier now knowing that he's in full, official command of the entire fleet."

Billy tried to stop the conflicting emotions, both the pain that the mention of her impending death always brought screaming to the surface and, paradoxically, the hilarity of her politically correct description of what had just taken place with the Admiral in the outer office, from registering on his face. Before he could verbalize a middle ground, she took his hand and looked him in the eye.

"I also want to thank you for your service to me since the invasion. You started a job with a lowly education secretary and ended up the right hand man to the president of the human race who starts rebellions and has visions and is dying to boot." She followed the last statement with a short, harsh laugh. When he didn't respond, she continued.

"You've been my best friend, Billy. You kept my secret when I needed it to kept, you came to my rescue in the brig, and you've helped me start dying with grace. One of my biggest regrets is that I won't be here to watch you become the man you're going to become. You'll be sitting in that chair out there in no time at all, Billy, I'm sure." She fought back tears as his eyes began to well up.

"Madam President, that's…," she cut him off as before he could get any further.

"Billy, let me finish. I'm dying. Soon. I can feel the life leaving me. I need you to help me with one more thing. Probably the most important thing I'll ever ask you to do for me. Do you think you can do that for me, Billy?"

He gulped back a sob, glanced down at her hand holding his to give him a moment to collect himself, and looked back into her eyes. He responded resolutely. "Anything, Madam President. I'll do anything for you."

"This isn't going to be easy, Billy, and I'm so sorry to do this to you." The weight of what she was about to ask this young man settled in her chest and she shifted slightly to lay her head against the back of the couch without letting go of his hand. She couldn't bear to look at him as she continued.

"Billy, I don't want to spend my last days in Life Station. I want to wait as long as possible before they strap me up to the machines. It's so undignified, Billy. It's cold and sterile and…," she shuddered at the thought. "I don't want everyone on the ship to come by to stare at me like a wounded animal in a zoo." She opened her eyes to judge his reaction. He looked stricken, but was listening carefully.

"It's not going to be easy to watch me die. I know that. It's easier for me, I think, than for everyone else. But Billy, no matter how much pain I'm in, no matter how hard it gets to watch, I need you to promise me that you will wait until the very end before you call Dr. Cottle. Can you promise me that, Billy? I need you to promise me."

The young aide couldn't hold in his sobs any longer. His chest heaved loudly as he struggled to wipe away the tears streaming down his face. He looked at her and saw the sad, resigned smile on her face, which caused the sobs to come harder. She released his hand and pulled him close to her chest for a warm hug. He tensed, scared of causing her pain, but relaxed into her arms as she pulled him tighter.

She kept him there, tears staining her jacket, until his sobs subsided and his breathing became more regular. She eased him away from her and cupped his face in her small hand. "Are you alright, Billy?"

He saw the pleading in her eyes and abruptly pulled away from her touch, looking at anything else in the room in order to avoid meeting her gaze. He didn't know if he would be strong enough to watch her suffer without running for help.

"How will I know it's time, Madam President?"

She considered him evenly. His serious response meant that he was seriously considering her request. For the hundredth time, she thanked the gods for granting her this particular boy to accompany her on this, her final journey.

"If I can say no, no matter what else I'm saying, it's not time." It was a pitiful response and she knew it.

She tried again, suddenly committed to easing his burden at the possible expense of adding to her own and that of the other man who held her heart. "If I can't speak, Billy, call for Admiral Adama. He'll know what to do."

Billy's lifted his eyes to meet her questioning gaze and he verbally assented to the most devastating order he'd ever received in his life. "I promise, Madam President, that I will wait until the very end before getting you to Life Station."

Her body almost sagged in relief and the events of the day, from the battle with the Resurrection ship and the promotion ceremony with Adama to the conversation she'd just had, landed heavily on her small frame.

"Thank you, Billy," she sighed. "Thank you." She lay back in a sitting position and once again closed her eyes.

He nodded and took his cue to go, standing above his boss and taking his nightly survey of her pallor and the rhythm of her breathing. Before taking his leave, he bent to slip off her heels and put two firms hands on her shoulders to carefully guide her into a position more conducive to sleep. From the edges of slumber she whispered, again, "thank you, Billy."


	3. Promises, Promises

_**Colonial One, one day after Admiral Adama's promotion ceremony**_

President Roslin was pissed when Admiral Adama had arrived with an unwelcome guest for their morning meeting. She was feeling well this morning, dressed and ready to work, and the presence of the ship's chief medical officer was a reminder of her mortality that she simply did not need today.

But Admiral Adama had done his best to make excuses, assuring her that he was taking Doctor Cottle to all of his meetings today to instruct the leaders on each ship about a new quarantine procedure in development after a virus running rampant on the _Astral Queen _had found its way to Galactica via a transport pilot.

"So, if you think someone is sick, lock 'em in a room and call me. I don't need anyone with this damn plague on a damn Raptor," the doctor finished, fumbling for a cigarette before remembering he'd promised the president, at least on her turf, not to fill her weakened lungs with tobacco smoke.

Laura Roslin considered the old military man and the even older MD before her. She was sure this could have been communicated in a memo to the fleet. Still, she pasted on a tight smile and stood to shake Cottle's tar-stained hand. "Thank you, Doctor. We'll take the new procedure under advisement."

He shook her hand and glanced at the Admiral, who gave a barely visible nod of encouragement.

Dr. Cottle looked back at the woman standing before him. "Well, Madam President, since I'm here, we think it would be a good idea to give you a once over, see how you're doing."

She glared over her glasses at Adama, then at Cottle, and then at Billy, who seemed to be trying to sink into the wallpaper on the other side of the small room.

All three men looked back with varying degrees of insistence, the young aide's surety in this plan visibly the least stable.

She graced all of them with a tight smile and said, cheerfully just for spite,"I'm pretty sure I'm still dying, Doctor."

"Be that as it may, I'd like to see just what your stubborn body is doing to keep you alive for this long. Might help me save someone not as stupid as you, young lady." Doctor Cottle walked toward the curtain leading to her private quarters, parted it, and gestured for her to lead the way. Giving up, she followed, but not before casting another withering stare at the two remaining co-conspirators occupying her office.

As soon as the curtain swung closed, the older man and the much younger one eyed each other. Neither seemed to have words to share about the plight of the woman they both adored undressing for what could be her final voluntary medical examination just a few feet away. They settled for preoccupied silence.

Billy busied himself with straightening papers on Roslin's desk, his mind replaying yesterday's painful conversation.

"_I need you to promise me that you will wait until the very end before you call Dr. Cottle. Can you promise me that, Billy? I need you to promise me."_

He shook his head, internally assuring himself that he hadn't betrayed her trust by agreeing to Admiral Adama's plan to bring the doctor to their morning meeting. He wasn't condemning her to Life Station, he reasoned, but buying her some time by allowing Cottle to examine her on her own ship.

Admiral Adama was lost in his own thoughts as well, flipping mindlessly through the briefing papers he'd brought to camouflage the real reason he was in President Roslin's office. She'd given him his wings and with them her dying blessing of his leadership. He still didn't know what came over him when he leaned down to kiss her but he'd been more preoccupied in the hours since with her response. She'd laughed. No, not laughed. Giggled. Like a schoolgirl. He tried to push every emotion that giggle had elicited from him out of his head, focusing on being content with having made a dying woman happy, even if just for a moment. She, they, didn't have time for anything more.

Both men started at Doctor Cottle's inelegant emergence from behind the curtain, which he immediately pulled closed with the full force of his arm.

"She's getting dressed," he said, without offering anything more.

"How is she?" It was Admiral Adama who managed to croak the words out first. Billy simply sunk into the president's chair, unconscious of protocol for the moment.

"Like the lady said, she's dying," he replied harshly. Seeing the anguish echoed on two faces, he softened and considered his next words.

"I'd like to have her in Life Station now. She's only got a few days, at most." The doctor studied the patterns on the floor for a moment before continuing. "I could make her more comfortable there, make sure the end isn't agonizing."

Billy stood, filled suddenly with purpose. "She doesn't want that, Doctor. She doesn't want to be cold and alone and...in a zoo." He stopped, sure his trembling voice had given away his boss' deepest confidence.

Admiral Adama looked back at Cottle, who effectively cut them both off with a wave of his hand. "I know that. She's just made clear her wishes in the most vulgar way the young lady knows and I've no grounds to drag her to my sickbay against her will. Today."

He made his way to an ancient medical bag, discarded near the Admiral's boot. He rustled around before producing a small, oblong bag.

The doctor fixed his stare on Billy and privately gauged the boy's stomach for the task before him. He kept private the pride welling up in his hardened heart as he realized the boy would do anything to help his president, even if it meant struggling with regret for the rest of his life.

"The end isn't going to be pretty. She's being eaten alive by this disease and she can feel every bite. Her lungs will shut down, followed by the other vital organs, and her heart will finally, mercifully, stop beating. She won't let me take her for a scan but there's a strong chance the cancer has gone to her brain." He paused as both men emitted gasps on a different register. He sighed before plunging ahead. "She may not be able to speak when the time comes, she may not know where she is or who is around her."

He approached Billy, ignoring the terrified look on his face, and pressed the bag into his hands.

"This is the strongest morpha I have. When it gets unbearable, give her an injection in her upper arm. But not more than one a day or you'll be the one to finally finish her off."

Billy looked down at the bag in his hands as if he'd been handed a long anticipated gift wrapped carefully in the folds of a grenade. He wasn't sure he'd be able to endure what the old doctor had just described but then he remembered the warm comfort of her embrace the day before, the promise he'd made, and the trust in her eyes. He simply nodded and opened a drawer into which he deposited the collection of loaded needles.

"Admiral Adama, I've got to be off." He gave a curt nod to the senior officer, then to the young man still staring pointedly at the drawer. He was out the door just a moment before the president, dressed and looking only slightly worse for wear, appeared from behind the curtain.

"Admiral Adama. I hope you didn't come here just to waste my time with that fool's errand. I'm ready for your sitrep, assuming you have one."

The chastened officer looked at Billy then back to the President. Billy blushed as he remembered the kiss President Roslin and the Admiral had shared the day before, wondering if they wanted more than just a few minutes alone to talk shop. "I'll wait outside, Madam President. Call if you need anything."


	4. Promise Fulfilled

_**Colonial One, 15:00, the day the tylium refinery is destroyed by Cylon sympathizers**_

Billy was practically glowing as he exited President Roslin's quarters, thrilled that the shot he'd given her earlier in the day not only hadn't killed his boss but given her both an appetite for a late lunch and getting dressed for work.

She'd even pushed him out of her quarters to order her meal while she donned her one of her three remaining suits on her own, a feat he'd thought long past her weakened state.

He listened to the ring of the wireless call as he phoned the mess, tempted to hum a made-up tune to accompany its monotonous trill. He heard the shattering of glass from inside the badly partitioned room just as the officer picked up to take his order.

"What can I get for you today, Mr. Keikeya? Sir? Sir, are you there?"

Billy abandoned the headset and ran into the President's room, searching for her first near the couch and then her desk before finally seeing her shrunken form curled up next to the door of the head, shaking uncontrollably.

As he reached her side, he realized that she was clad only in a tank top and underwear and that she was having a seizure. Her exposed body was writhing in the shards of the glass whose destruction had summoned him from the other room.

"Madam President, hold on." Summoning the lifeguard training earned as a teen that he thought he'd never use again, he rolled the prone woman onto her side and placed the handkerchief he produced from his pocket carefully into her mouth. As her eyes rolled back in her head, he lifted as much of her body as he could onto her own to keep her skin from being sliced to shreds. Even in his panic, the irony of protecting a woman in her death throes from flesh wounds didn't escape him.

"It's alright, Madam President. Relax. You're ok. You're ok. It's all going to be alright." Billy held her tightly and cooed nonsensical, stupid, meaningless words at the smartest woman he'd ever met. Just as the tears let loose down his face, her body ceased its frantic movement and she moaned through the material of the handkerchief, spitting it out and seizing his hand with a crazed look in her eyes.

"I can stop the strike. They're just teachers. If you'll only trust me, Bill, I can take care of everything. I can fix this for us." The President's eyes lost focus as Billy tried to parse the meaning of her words. Fevered words, he realized, for the first time noticing the unnatural heat emanating from her body and causing his torso and legs where their bodies met to sweat.

"President Roslin, listen to me." He forced her staring eyes to meet his by manually moving her face with his hand. She looked at him, or at least in his vicinity, with terror. She was having trouble more trouble breathing now than he'd ever seen before and her gasps for breath were mixed with cries of pain.

Remembering how using her first name had gotten a response earlier, he tried that tact. "Laura, it's Billy. Please, let me call Dr. Cottle now. Please. I can't do this." Her eyes went wide, gripped with the knowledge that this was the end and that she couldn't force her body to cooperate long enough to tell Billy just to let her die here, in the privacy of her own bedroom.

Even without words, Billy picked up on her fear. "Madam President, I'm going to leave you for just a second and call Admiral Adama now, ok? I'm not leaving you, Laura, and I'm not sending you to Life Station, I'm just going to get Bill."

Without waiting for a response that he wasn't sure would come anyway, he carefully lifted her body off of his and onto a piece of carpet not covered in glass. The older woman recoiled in pain. "Bill. Bill." She let another long moan escape as the younger man left her side. "Bill."

Billy reached the wireless and, with the memory of accidentally alerting the press to the president's collapse a few months earlier still fresh in his mind, accessed the main communications channel.

He tried to steady the panic in his voice. "Galactica, this is Colonial One. The president needs to see Admiral Adama right away. Repeat, we need Admiral Adama on the first available shuttle to Colonial One."

_**Galactica CIC, 15:00**_

Admiral Bill Adama was not in a good mood. His finest pilot had spent the last week cavorting with a murderer, the woman who'd tried to kill him, or the Cylon who looked remarkably like the woman who'd served as one of his best pilots _and_ tried to kill him, was pregnant by one of his officers and cooling her heels in the brig. To top it all off, he couldn't stop thinking about the chaste kiss he'd shared with the President of the Twelve Colonies a little more than 48 hours ago. He absentmindedly rubbed the sharp, triangular pins at his collar as he pondered the woman who managed to move his hard heart for the first time in twenty years.

_She's dying, Bill. Leave it to you to fall for the most unavailable woman in the whole fleet. _

Admiral Adama was snapped out of his reverie by Petty Officer Dualla's insistent voice.

"Sir? Admiral Adama? Admiral Adama?" As soon as he turned to face the slight Marine to his left, he knew something was terribly wrong.

"Sir, you're needed on Colonial One. Without delay." Dualla paused, biting her bottom lip. When he didn't respond immediately, she broke protocol and blurted out, "Billy's terrified. Something must be wrong with President Roslin."

Admiral Adama was gone, racing through the crowded halls of his ship to the flight deck, before Petty Officer Dualla could finish her thought.

_**Colonial One, 15:25**_

Admiral Adama banged through the hatch to the president's office without bothering to knock and, realizing the outer space was unoccupied, rushed through the curtain and into what they'd been calling that sad excuse for a presidential bedroom.

Once inside, he spotted Billy's lanky frame leaning awkwardly over the crumpled body of President Roslin. Billy looked up as the officer entered, grateful there was someone else, anyone else, there to share his burden.

Adama reached her side and took her into his strong arms, noticing for the first time her panicked breathing and bloody, bare legs.

He held her face close to his, careful not to put further pressure on her lungs. "Madam President, it's Bill. Can you hear me?"

Laura Roslin wanted to speak. She wanted to tell him that, yes Bill, I know you're here and that makes this ok. But her body was betraying her for the final time and the elegant words she wanted to bestow on her stoic fly boy came out in a mangled cry.

Adama looked up at the President's aide and started issuing orders.

"Billy, I need you to get me a medical transport to Galactica." Looking into the boy's uncomprehending face, he realized Laura's right hand man was likely suffering from shock. "Now!"

Billy leapt for the wireless, not caring or simply unable to stifle his sobs as he demanded the medical transport be sent to Colonial One. "Make sure it has oxygen. She can't breathe. She needs…" Adama overheard the transmission and yelled out to preserve the president's last shreds of dignity.

"Billy, ok. You've done that. Good man. I need you to find me her skirt now. No one's going to see her like this."

As Adama cooed the same stupid, meaningless words to the President he'd uttered what seemed like hours before, Billy stumbled into the head and located her discarded black skirt. He brought it out like a trophy and handed it to the Admiral. He couldn't bear to look at the woman struggling in his arms, whose agonized gasps for breath had turned to a low, raspy sound that he somehow remembered reading about. That sound was called a death rattle.

Adama surveyed the situation and roughly ordered Billy to get the skirt over the president's legs as he held her still, mumbling comforting sounds into her ears, all the while realizing she was planets away from them both.

"Bill." Her mind seemed to clear just as Billy clasped the skirt around her waist.

"I'm here, Laura. I'm here." He stroked her hair and continued to speak. "Stay with me, Laura."

She was conscious enough to be grateful that he'd not offered any more false promises of everything being ok. This was definitely not going to be ok.

"It hurts, Bill…" Her voice trailed off into a slur as the pain overtook her senses again. As she began to cry, he leaned into her ear and uttered the words he no longer cared if anyone heard.

"I love you, Laura Roslin."

Her eyes went wide and so did Billy's, who'd heard something he would never repeat, something that made him happy in the saddest moment of his entire life.

Adama kissed her lips softly, this time not pulling away too soon in embarrassment. Before she could respond, before he could even ascertain if she was capable of responding, the medical team burst through the door.

Bill insisted on placing her on the stretcher himself, holding her hand as the medics hooked her up to oxygen and began giving her injections to ease the agony. He never let go of her hand during the short trip to the battleship.

Once they got to Galactica, once the president was in Cottle's care and drugged beyond understanding her surroundings, Admiral Adama slipped away to the CIC.

He'd lost a son. He'd lost pilots and friends and mourned lives he himself had snuffed out. The only thing Admiral Adama could not survive was watching that woman die.


End file.
